America’s Asian Alliances Have Outlived Their Purpose

“The U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty of 1960 obligates the United States to treat any armed attack against any territories under the administration of Japan as dangerous to [America’s] own peace and safety. This would cover such islets as the Senkakus also claimed by Beijing.”

So this author wrote 15 years ago in A Republic Not an Empire.

And so it has come to pass. The United States, because of this 53-year-old treaty, is today in the middle of a quarrel between Japan and China over these very rocks in the East China Sea.

This Senkakus dispute, which has warships and planes of both nations circling each other around and above the islands, could bring on a shooting war. And if it does, America would be in it.

Yet why should this be America’s quarrel?

The USSR of Nikita Khrushchev and the China of Mao Zedong, the totalitarian Communist states against whom we were committed to defend Japan, are dead and gone.

Why, then, are we still obligated to defend not only Japan, but all of its island possessions?

Why were the treaties that committed us to go to war for scores of nations in the Truman-Eisenhower era not dissolved, when the threat that gave rise to those treaties disappeared?

“The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies,” said Lord Salisbury. Of no nation is that truer than 21st-century America.

For some reason, we cannot let go. We seem so taken with our heroic role in the late Cold War that we cannot give it up, though the world has moved on.

Following China’s declaration of an air defense identification zone over the Senkakus [Diaoyu to China], South Korea declared its own ADIZ, which overlaps upon those of both China and Japan.

South Korea is also in a quarrel with China over a submerged reef in the Yellow Sea known as Ieodo, but to China, Suyan. Seoul has built a maritime research station on the reef, the value of which is enhanced by the oil and gas deposits in the surrounding seabed.

These clashing claims of Beijing and Seoul could present problems for us– for, under our 1953 mutual security treaty, an attack on South Korean territory is to be regarded as “dangerous to [America’s] own peace and safety.”

Thus far, China’s response to South Korea’s ADIZ has been muted. For Beijing’s focus is on Japan.

However, South Korea also has a long-running dispute with Tokyo over an island chain in the Sea of Japan. To the Koreans these islands are Dokdo, to the Japanese, Takeshima.

What we have here, then, are three overlapping air defense identification zones—of China, Japan and South Korea—and three territorial disputes—between China and Japan, China and South Korea, and Japan and South Korea.

And all three nations claim the right to fly warplanes into these zones, and to deny access to foreign warplanes.

America has little control over these countries, all of which have new governments that are increasingly nationalistic.

And this week there appeared an even more ominous cloud.

North Korea’s 30-year-old ruler Kim Jong-un, who has been purging his party and army, ousted, on charges of corruption, his uncle and mentor Jang Song Thaek, the second-most powerful man in the regime.

Kim reportedly had two of Jang’s aides executed, and he is now massing ships and planes along his western sea border with South Korea, a site of previous clashes between North and South.

Kim may also be about to conduct a fourth nuclear test.

Any collision between North and South could instantly involve the United States, which, 60 years after the end of the Korean War, still has 28,500 troops on the peninsula, with thousands right up on the Demilitarized Zone.

And, lest we forget, the United States has a 1951 security treaty with the Philippines that obliges us to come to the defense of those islands. Yet, Manila, too, is involved in a dispute over islets such as Mischief Reef and Scarborough Shoal in a South China Sea that has been declared sovereign territory by Beijing.

The U.S. security treaties with Manila and Tokyo were entered into to defend those countries against a Sino-Soviet bloc that no longer exists.

Our treaty with Seoul was signed when South Korea was ravaged and destitute after three years of war. Today, the South has twice the population and 40 times the economy of the North. Why are we still there?

Neither U.S. political party has shown the least interest in reviewing these open-ended war guarantees, though it seems certain that one of these 50- or 60-year-old commitments will one day drag us into a confrontation if not a major war.

U.S. foreign policy today appears rooted less in U.S. vital interests than in nostalgia for the Cold War. As Dean Acheson said of the British half a century ago, so, it seems to be true of us: The Americans have lost an empire—and not yet found a role.

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26 Responses to America’s Asian Alliances Have Outlived Their Purpose

Taiwan, South Korea and Japan should be well able to handle their relationships with China and North Korea at this point. China needs to make more money, and North Korea needs to feed its people. As for territorial disputes, money will still go farther than bullets and bombs.

So true, Pat, and how many other Americanisms have outlived their usefulness? Like at what point will diversity quotas have achieved whatever it is they are supposed to achieve? Embargo on Cuba? NATO? Farm Subsidies? So-called Free Trade agreements? War on Drugs? War on Terror? The list goes on. Seems America can’t let go of things that aren’t working anymore because 1. they can’t admit that these things will never be successful and 2. because Americans won’t concede that our 1946-2006 boom is over and a new mentality may be required now. Are we a dinosaur that can’t adapt to change?

Absolutely. The American military destroying Chinese assets while the United States is simultaneously selling China tens of Billions in Treasury Bonds (to help pay the American Merchants of Death for their weapons systems), importing hundreds of Billions in Chinese goods, importing thousands of Chinese H-1B STEM workers to displace Americans, and educating thousands of Chinese students is almost phantasmagorical.

The sign of one’s achieving greatness is one’s ability to delegate tasks to the subordinates.

If America has achieved greatness, it must be able to allow Japan and the PRC fight each other for their long-standing disputes, instead of becoming entangled with other nations’ problems.

America has unfathomable financial and security obligations to its citizens and its territories.

With over 17 trillion dollars in national debts and over 90 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities for Socialist Security and Medicare benefits, American government is better off NOT spending anymore money in militarily defending one nation from another nation especially when such action has nothing to do with social, economic and cultural integrity of the United States.

America should delegate its war task, if there is such an important thing, to other nations that want wars to resolve their own territorial problems.

Please enlighten me Mr Buchanan, anyone what China is gaining by the new ADIZ. It has already been ignored by the US military, while China claimed there was no incursion. It seems to me that China must respond forcefully to further incursions, or back down, look weak, and tacitly acknowledge Japanese de facto control over these rocks. Is this going to be another agreement to disagree, such as the China/Taiwan relationship? This was the status quo?

The issues between China and Japan and China and South Korea will work themselves out just fine. The Chinese own too much of our debt to risk us defaulting on them, which I’m sure we will do if they force armed conflict on us.

North Korea is just up to more of the same. They aren’t getting the attention they thought they would get after letting their prisoner go and now are back to rattling their rusty sabers in the hopes of a hand out. I’m sure they will make a big stink, maybe fire another Luk Hat Mei missle over Japan in the hoeps that someone will throw some table scrapes their way.

This was a well written article Pat, but I doubt anyone in the Pacific is ready to go to war over oil just yet. OPEC is still producing enough for everyone. Maybe in another couple decades, maybe.

You’re absolutely right, Mr. Buchanan. It is not in the U.S. national interest to be bound by six-decade-old treaty obligations to Japan and South Korea to “act to meet the common danger” in the event of “an armed attack in the Pacific area…in territories now under their respective administrative control.”

Moreover, both Japan and South Korea are more likely to try to negotiate reasonable, peaceful resolutions to their disputes with Beijing — and especially to avoid provocative military posturing — if they both understand that provoking an armed conflict with Beijing will not not automatically drag the U.S. into a military commitment on their behalf.

I can’t help but agree, but with one caveat. The right of free passage along major sea routes must be enforced. This is one of those truly international concerns. As China ascends, she must be “Housebroken” to some degree as to what is acceptable international practice.

I hope someone among the diplomats is reminding the Chinese that the USA is a great power not withstanding Bermuda, the Bahamas and all the other sovereign entities we abide within our sphere of influence and close to our shores. We even put up with Cuba. If they want to be respected as a great power they need to show the same maturity.

I’m almost always in full agreement with Mr. Buchanan. But I feel as though this article brushes over some complexities. First, isn’t our defense of Japan as much about preventing the rise of a Japanese military threat as anything? Additionally, granting that it might be better for the U.S. not to have these treaty obligations if we were deciding on them today, it doesn’t stand to reason that the U.S. can remove itself from said obligations tomorrow without creating instability in the region. And by instability, I mean a regional war which our proximity across the Pacific would draw us into one way or another. So is it really so bad that we have a military presence there now?

South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, yes … Japan, not so much I think. Japan is going through the same process as when Germany threw off the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles, step by step, slowly but surely the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army are being rebuilt, ironically aided and abetted by Uncle Sam. Japan is under a right wing gov’t, nationalist nasties and I see traditional Japanese Militarism reviving. Remember those guys? They were the main enemy during WWII in the Pacific? The guys who perpetrated Pearl Harbor? America’s other Asian allies, and China of course, see it, why doesn’t America? Don’t let dislike of China blind you to this old threat. The ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ may yet rise again.

Hypothetical scenario: Japan, in its effort to regain its lost Empire, embroil the two giants China and America in a war, thereby weakening both sides. Once both enemies are weakened, Japan steps in and picks up the pieces. If I were a Japanese strategist, that’s what I would do, killing two birds with one stone, … humbling China and avenging Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hooly: Japan’s population, while substantial, is aging and beginning to shrink. From wikipedia:

“Based on the Health and Welfare ministry estimation released in January 2012, Japan’s population will keep declining by about one million people every year in the coming decades, which will leave Japan with a population of 87 million in 2060. By that time, more than 40% of the population is expected to be over the age of 65.[5] In 2012, the population for a sixth straight year of declines by 212,000 as the biggest drop on record since 1947 and also a record low of 1.03 million number of births.[6]

The population ranking of Japan dropped from 7th to 8th in 1990, to 9th in 1998, and to 10th since.”

Manpower certainly isn’t the only consideration in a high-tech war, but Japan is and will be in a poor position to take on either America or China even if we were foolish enough to fight each other first.

Thomas O. Meehan
I don’t think China is trying to halt free passage in international waters. This has to do with the problem who owns those islands, and subsequently making the surrounding waters theirs, thus allowing the control of passage in those waters.

The sign of one’s achieving greatness is one’s ability to delegate tasks to the subordinates.

“If America has achieved greatness, it must be able to allow Japan and the PRC fight each other for their long-standing disputes, instead of becoming entangled with other nations’ problems.”

Agreed. But this blog and its comments are so far away from conventional FP thinking in US. There is increasing sentiment within the public to ‘let them solve their own problems.” But no politician is willing to advance it.

Re: RadicalCenter2016 -> Thomas “absolutely, we must keep international shipping and air lanes open for us and for all, and China must be deterred from interfering with those lanes.

The warped irony is that the United States now no longer has any international shipping to speak of. The U.S. does not manufacture international ships, American companies do not own international ships, flag international ships or crew international ships.

The U.S. Navy is keeping shipping lanes open for Chinese ships to ship debt funded goods to the United States!

“The U.S. Navy said the Cowpens was conducting regular freedom-of-navigation operations when the incident occurred.”

This incident is an example of the dangerous attitudes bred among U.S. authorities who continue to make policy decisions while entrapped within the parameters of the U.S.’s six-decades-old Japan and South Korea treaty obligations.

We can imagine the U.S. reaction to China conducting similar, parallel “freedom-of-navigation operations” by sending Chinese warships to shadow U.S. vessels in the Gulf of Mexico.

Whether it is this week’s U.S. naval operations in the South China Sea or similar Chinese naval operations in the Gulf of Mexico, all such military operations are unnecessarily provocative and dangerous — not to mention counterproductive in terms of peaceful diplomatic resolutions of issues.

All the more reason for the U.S. to follow Mr. Buchanan’advice and to abandon the Japan and South Korea mutual defense treaties.

What we are failing to do diplomatically is to distinguish between old enemies who are today rational and approachable (China, Vietnam) and an old enemy that seems like a comic book parody of totalitarian lunacy (North Korea).

Does anyone in our diplomatic corps not get that rather obvious distinction? Why isn’t policy based on it?

From your lips to God’s ears Mr. Buchanan, but unfortunately in the United States there are too many defense contractors that need their no bid government contracts for Washington DC to heed your wisdom. Let Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines (maybe Vietnam as well which is Communist but anti-Chinese)make their own coalition to defend their small nations against Chinese aggression. It is not and should not be the job of the United States, but as I said the Defense Industry is the bread and butter of many powerful people in the US so nothing you or I will say will make a difference.

Mr. Buchanan doesn’t seem to understand that it’s a terrible idea to break such treaties on a whim. Not only would we piss off states that we have strong ties to, it would also set a precedent for all our allies and future partners that we can’t be relied upon to keep our word. He also overlooks the fact that in a region full of lengthy rivalries, the US is the only trusted arbiter. In fact, one could argue that our presence helps keep the peace, which is most definitely beneficial to us given our economic ties.